The purpose of this mini course is to encourage you to systemise your hiring process. The selection of new employees is about legal discrimination. First we start with a large group of applicants and through a process of "hurdles" based on the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Mental ability and Experience (KSAMEs) needed for the job, we end up with what we hope is the right person for the job. From my experience, most hiring managers are doing just that, relying on "hope".

If selecting a new employee is about discrimination, then it is imperative that we discriminate fairly. The way to ensure this is to systemise the hiring process so that all applicants get treated the same way. For example, all applicants are subjected to the same interview questions, same interview panel and the same psychometric assessments. This leads to better hiring decisions because the process has been standardised; in other words we are always comparing "apples with apples". 

A useful analogy for the selection process is to visualise an iceberg. One third of the iceberg sits above the waterline. This represents the observable Knowledge, Skills and Experience (KSE) of the candidate – “can” they do the job? This information is teased out through the application form (Or CV/resume), interview and referencing.  KSEs are learned behaviours and as such are coachable and trainable.

It's the two thirds that sit under the waterline that most hiring managers fail to assess – “will”, or “how” they will do the job? This represents the candidate's innate personality characteristics, mental abilities, motives and values – In simple terms their attitude. This can only be assessed through psychological profiling. More about this in Tip 5.

Most managers hire on KSEs, but will usually terminate, or end up having problem employees, because of their personality, attitude and mental ability.

Having the right mix of personality traits and mental ability applicable to the job will insure the candidate applies their knowledge, skills and experience in the most productive way to the benefit of both the organisation and themselves.

A note of caution: the selection process can be systemised in many different ways dependent on the job position. The following tips in this Mini Course are generalised and designed to get you thinking about what elements you need to concentrate on when developing your own bullet-proof selection system. 
 
What are the problems with the traditional selection process?

1    A lack of planning. Have you done a job analysis? Do you have a written list of the Knowledge, Skills and personal Attributes needed for this position?

2    Most managers hire on emotion. They are very good at hiring people on what they can do and poor at assessing who they are. Gut feel and emotional judgement tend to rule – managers like and hire people who are like themselves.

3    Many managers hire on experience instead of ability – you can teach people to sell, but you can’t teach resilience, optimism and motivation to persuade.

4    Interviews are unstructured one-on-one chats.

5    The interviewer does most of the talking.

6    Interviewers are never trained.

7    Seldom are the candidates' personal characteristics tested through personality and critical reasoning tests.

8    A lack of diligent reference and/or background checking.

There are many more; however, the above are some of the key areas we would like to cover in this report.         

Tip One - Do you know what you are looking for?........

Subscribe below to get the rest of part 1 as well as parts
2, 3 and 4